Bolt Of Lightning
by nowhere-dawn-death-phan
Summary: Outside, the world goes on. Cars drive past with radios blaring, he can hear conversations out the window, in other countries people are at school and work. The world isn't ending because the life of a Warehouse Agent is about to. It isn't; but it sure feels like it should be. Pete struggles to come to terms with the inevitable. (Spoilers for Season 4 finale!)


This is undoubtedly one of the most pathetic things that Pete has ever seen.  
It's also, undoubtably, the most helpless he's felt in his entire life.  
He folds his legs to his chest, resting his chin on them, and watches Myka sleep.  
Her fingers are curled into loose fists, her head turned away from him, towards the whitewashed walls that sport the same sickly pallor as her complexion.  
He hates the smell of hospitals, always has and probably always will. They remind him of things; things he'd rather forget, and he turns his attention back to the present, to here and now, to his partner, sleeping fitfully but deeply.

* * *

Outside, the world goes on. Cars drive past with radios blaring, he can hear conversations out the window, in other countries people are at school and work. The world isn't ending because the life of a Warehouse Agent is about to. It isn't; but it sure feels like it should be.  
He realises then, that he hasn't cried since this whole thing started. That, for the entire time, he's been stoic and brave for her, because if she sees him break then there's no hope.  
He's been the one arguing ever onwards that the tunnel can't last forever, that there's a light out there somewhere.

He realises now, perhaps the light at the end of the tunnel isn't what he first thought it was. It isn't going back to the way things were. It isn't piggyback races up the B&B staircase, him and Steve shoulder to shoulder, Myka and Claudia yelling teasing insults from above as they overtake each other. It isn't standing back to back on a dusty road, guns raised. It's mustering up the appetite to eat half a slice of cold, dry toast in the morning. It's walks through hospital gardens in a wheelchair because it's a warm day. It's reading Hamlet aloud and giving all of the characters stupid voices to try and make her smile.  
It's him not saying "goodbye" when he leaves at night because "goodbye means you're not coming back. Goodbye is final." so instead he tells her "I'll be back soon" because that's a promise. A promise he'll come to see her as long as she makes an effort to be around to see him.

* * *

And one day... one day the light at the end of the tunnel is him saying his usual "I'll be back soon, Mykes" as he leaves, and her taking a sharp breath before rolling over in bed to face the window and responding "goodbye, Pete" and him barely making it back to the car before he breaks down in tears because "goodbye is final" and this, _this_ is final. This is no longer delaying and denying the inevitable. This is the last time there'll ever be a human being with her way of biting her lip and twirling her hair to avoid conversation, and her copious love of novels, and her ability to speak upwards of ten different languages with near-fluency. This is the last time there'll ever be somebody who drapes herself over his shoulder, and sucks her thumb as she falls asleep because she never grew out of it. There'll never be anybody else with her dark unruly hair and clear brown eyes, or with her half-smile, or with her way of walking where she always starts with her right foot. _Always._  
There will never be another Myka Ophelia Bering, and Pete puts the car in gear but doesn't actually drive anywhere, just lays his head on the steering wheel and looks up at the window he knows is hers.

Because there had been apathy in her voice as she'd said goodbye. There'd been apathy and indifference and resignation. The world had been beating her since the day she was born. It had been beating her and slating her since she'd been old enough to walk in a straight line, since she'd been old enough to write her name and read a paragraph of Shakespeare without stuttering.  
It had been beating her and slating her and kicking her until she'd raised her hands in surrender and laid down to die.  
Until she'd become so empty, so done with the entire thing that it was almost easier to lie there and let it take her than it was to keep fighting another day.

Pete didn't blame her; couldn't blame her; wouldn't blame her.  
The lights in the side-room of the cancer ward of the hospital go off for the night, and behind a concrete wall, his partner and best friend lies there waiting to die, begging and pleading to die, to be allowed to face her fate with what little dignity she has left before that too is taken from her.  
Pete turns his head away from the window, and takes a deep breath, and looks down at his phone, at the messages from Claudia telling Pete to give Myka her love. At the messages from Steve that are well thought out and sincere. At the missed call from Helena, who's catching a flight tomorrow morning from Wyoming to come and see Myka.

* * *

He doesn't respond to any of them, just tosses his phone onto the passenger seat and pulls out of Rapid City General's carpark and turns up the CD she made for him with his fathers favourite songs on as loud as he can and makes the long drive back to the B&B.  
He falls into bed without getting undressed and sleeps through til past lunchtime, until his phone rings and he checks it and it's from Artie. Artie, who he knows is listed as Myka's next of kin because she's scared of her father and hates her mother and hasn't spoken to her little sister since her nephew was born.

He doesn't answer the call, instead he rolls over and buries his head under his pillow and pretends he's still sleeping, pretends the hammer hasn't fallen just yet, pretends that he'll go in today, like he does everyday, and Myka will berate him for being late and he'll apologise and everything will be just as it should for one more day.  
Strangely enough, he remembers then, something Myka told him when he'd ended up in hospital after snagging the Spine of Saracen all those years ago, when they'd barely been friends. She'd mentioned that after the spine had attached itself to him and he'd ran away, they'd only known where to find him because Rebecca had mentioned that he'd "found his bolt of lightning", a reference to shutting down the spine.  
He remembers that, waking up burnt and in pain, Myka asleep at the bottom of the bed, having died after electrocuted himself with the power generator to try and destroy the spine.  
He remembers Myka throwing herself at him, swearing and sobbing because "you had no right, Pete, no right asking me to kill you. None! You selfish, pig-headed, bastard, what the hell were you thinking?"

Pete realises suddenly, why Myka had been so eager to die in her last days.  
Because all those years ago, Pete may have found his bolt of lightening; but Myka had found her light at the end of the tunnel.  
And in a way, he supposed, they were sort of the same thing.


End file.
